How to Have an iPrint Printer Service a Legacy Print Queue

You can configure a Legacy print queue to be serviced by an iPrint printer. This would be beneficial for a site that's in the process of upgrading/converting to iPrint printers while still having Legacy print queues in place.

Note: The Novell client must be installed with the NDPS print services selected before you attempt this configuration. If the NDPS services are not installed with the Client, clicking on the Print Spooler configuration button (described later in this article) will return an error.

Setting Up an iPrint Printer To Service a Legacy Print Queue

In order to have an iPrint printer service a legacy print queue, you must first create the iPrint printer. Then make sure that it is configured and working correctly.

You will also need to use the NWAdmin utility to manage queue-based print systems. Implementing this phase will in no way disable your current eDirectory queue-based printing environment.

The first thing that you need to create is the queue-based printing environment. To do this, open the NWAdmin utility and highlight the Organization object, then click on the Tools menu item. From the Tools drop-down menu, select Print Services Quick Setup (Non - NDPS).

Name the new print server something that will be helpful; for example, you could name the print server something like "1215PrintServer" that could be used for an HP Photosmart 1215 printer. Likewise, name the print queue something helpful; for example, something like 1215queue, as seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Creating a Print Server and Print Queue

Once this is created and while still in the NWAdmin utility, right-click the iPrint Printer object you want users to print to, then select Details. Click the Jobs v button.

From the menu, select Spooling Configuration. At the bottom of the form, you will see a field labeled Service Jobs from NetWare Queues. Click Add and select the existing NDS queues you want to assign for the printer. In our example, this will be the 1215queue print queue as shown in Figure 2. Click OK and close the Spooling Configuration window.

Figure 2

While still in the NWAdmin utility, find the existing NDS Print Server object that represents the NDS Print Queue object you just transitioned; right-click the object and select Details. Click on the Assignments button as shown in Figure 3 and select the printer object that was servicing the NDS print queue object or that was just added to the Spooling Configuration in the step above, then click Delete. The printer object is deleted from this section as it would then service the queue rather than the iPrint printer.

Figure 3

Click OK, then Close.

Now in the NWAdmin main screen, find the existing NDS Printer object that represents the NDS Print Queue object that your iPrint printer will be servicing; right-click on the object and select Details.

Click on the Assignments button as shown in Figure 4. From the bottom page, verify that the Default Print Queue is unchanged and shows the print queue object that was created earlier (such as 1215queue). The Print Server field should now be empty (but Figure 4 shows the Print Server field contains 1215Printserver.novell). Do not delete the queue field.

At this point the print queue is now ready to be serviced by the selected iPrint printer. On the workstation, the queue will need to be captured so that is the "designated printer" rather than the printer itself. To do this, click on the Start button, and then select Printers and Faxes. Click on Add a Printer.

Figure 4

Follow the dialogs through browsing for a network printer. When you have your list of printers and queues, select the Queue created in this procedure (for this example, it's 1215QUEUE). Now make this the default printer. Any jobs sent to it will go to the actual queue and will be processed by the iPrint printer that is now associated with it.

Remember that printing to a printer that has been captured (photo1215 on ipp://10.0.0.20) will still print directly to the printer and by-pass the print queue.

Conclusion

This document has taken you through the configuration steps for setting up an iPrint printer to service a Legacy print queue. This procedure can be used with any existing Legacy print queues that exist in your environment.